Time. Money. People. Labor. Do you want to waste these precious resources? We didn’t think so. Then why is it that manual event registration methods still survive in planning and executing events?

In many situations the person or persons making the decision about whether or not to use online event registration software is not going to be involved in the daily planning and running of the event. Often the things these decision makers care about most – like cost – are not always the same as the things that can keep an event professional up at night – like please make it easier and quicker for me! With such a disconnection, how do you make the case to ditch manual event registration and upgrade to online event registration software?

When you, as an event professional, are choosing online registration software, you already know about the biggest advantages this type of software offers. Among the many benefits, you can automatically collect attendee information in a fraction of the time manual event registration requires and without the huge labor expense. Also switching from manual event registration to online registration reduces the stress load on the people running the event – you.

If you need to convince someone to give you the ok for online event registration software, then you need to show the costs of the traditional manual event registration and the benefits of going to online event registration software. So we prepared 9 scary ways using manual registration is costing you as well as the benefits to using an online system.

Objections! Why Are You Staying with Manual Event Registration?

The most common objections to moving from manual event registration to an online system include:

It’s not in the budget

Our old system is working (or worked) fine

We aren’t ready for online event registration

Do any of these objections sound familiar in your office discussions? Do you really want to keep old manual event registration practices or do you want to move forward? OK, I get it. As event professionals we are always short on time and money and sometimes we rely on tried and true practices because it seems like the quickest or easiest thing to do. Or maybe “we’ve always done it that way” feels comfortable and taking the leap to do things differently fills you, your boss or clients with dread.

But it’s really time to stop and reconsider. It’s time to come into the twenty-first century and lose some of those costly, very labor intensive, extra work generating event planning practices. Break those old event registration habits, or at least the worse ones, and push your boundaries.

When you do, you will realize that if you update your tools and choose the best modern practices to support your organization, it can lead to much better event and meeting success outcomes – with more hours in the day for you to focus on creating a better attendee experience. To work smarter and not harder and provide your attendees the best event experience, it’s time to change.

People typically make objections to switching from manual event registration when they don’t know how online event registration works and how it will help them. What you need to make your case are some effective arguments showing the costs – in terms of time, money, labor, inefficiencies – of staying with a manual process vs. the benefits of replacing it with an online process. Here are some great ones for you to use.

Quick and Easy Registration Experience for Attendees

With manual event registration, potential attendees need to download a paper form, fill it out and either fax or mail it back to you. All event registration takes time to a point but this old traditional way is far more time consuming for attendees.

Manual event registration also has potential for lost registrations, data and payment security issues and delays in registering attendees. Another problem – when you’re closed, so is your event registration process. Not good – you may miss out on getting those potential attendees.

Online event registration is fast and seamless experience for attendees linking them to a form from your event website which they can complete and return with a click of a button. The registration information is submitted to your database within minutes. No need to deal with faxing and mailing. No delays with receiving information; no data or payment security issues.

Also, online event registration is always open so attendees can register any time whether your office is open or closed. This is especially important when dealing with people from different time zones.

Registration Forms with Built in Logic

People make mistakes. This happens of course when completing registration forms for events. When using manual event registration methods, such as faxes and mail-ins, catching and correcting these mistakes gets difficult and costly in terms of time and a person’s labor. It also can create confusion down the line at the event itself if not caught and corrected in time or at all.

Online event registration forms can prevent people from making mistakes or invalid or conflicting selections. This results in more accurate and complete data. For example, if someone leaves an important mandatory field blank and tries to submit the form, the built in logic of the form can create a message asking the person to fill that section in before continuing.

Similarly, if a potential attendee must choose between one option and another, the form can eliminate the possibility of the person choosing both options. This is not possible with fax or mail-in registrations.

Elimination of Manual Data Entry for You

Manual event registration requires you and your team to manually enter all the data from paper forms faxed or mailed in, into a computer, or worse, create some paper filing system. The potential for data entry errors is significant and the time and labor it takes to manually organize the data can be excessive.

With online event registration, potential attendees enter their information into an online form. It is automatically organized and stored in an online database that you can immediately access, anywhere at any time. There is no opportunity for someone else along the line to misread the data or enter it incorrectly.

More Manageable Information, Better Data Integrity

A common challenge in event planning is maintaining your data so that what you need is stored in one place, not on several different computers, in filing cabinets or on various desks throughout your office. This is often the untidy situation with manual event registration which can create a real potential for inconsistencies, errors, and headaches for both you and your attendees.

Online event registration holds all information in one central database. Any changes or updates are done automatically. Everyone sees the same information. Information is consistent and up-to-date at all times. Also, you can access and sort the information online or automatically download it to your spreadsheet, making it easy to create mailing lists, name badges, or whatever you need to do.

Automatic Event Confirmation

When using manual event registration, the average turn-a-round time from the day a paper registration form is received until the attendee gets a confirmation can take a few days. With fax and mail-in registration, confirmation is delayed as your team manually processes the registration, checks availability, and then manually creates a confirmation email or letter. This is a highly inefficient and costly use of your precious time and event personnel.

Once a person submits their information through the online event registration form, the system automatically generates a confirmation email that is sent out to the potential attendee confirming their registration. This email can also contain other information you may want them to know once they have registered.

Secure, Real Time Payment

Ensuring safe, secure payment is yet another reason to ditch manual event registration processes. When using manual event registration, you can often be waiting for the check to come in the mail or for a credit card transaction to be approved – or declined. In the meantime, you may have to put other potential attendees on a wait list until you know for sure that payment is coming and secured.

Using online event registration, you use real time, secure online credit card processing. Within a few seconds you know if the transaction has been approved and you have the security of know you have the fees. Online credit card processing also allows people registering for your event to process their own transactions. This eliminates the need for you to individually process each transaction and from having to track people down when cards are declined because the number is incorrect or funds are not available.

Managing Event Capacity

Often you want to limit the number of attendees to an event or meeting. With the old manual event registration method there is no easy or fast way to monitor the attendance numbers. Faxes might still be coming in when you reached your event limit and then you have to contact potential attendees to let them know that you couldn’t process their registrations because the event was full. Awkward!

Online event registration helps you set the limits so that it limits the number of registrants to a particular event, workshop, or sessions. Once the limit has been reached the form will not allow any more registrations and it will notify potential attendees that the registration limit has been reached.

Real Time Reports- Tracking Attendees and Revenues

One of the big complaints we as event professionals experience is that we often don’t know how many attendees are showing up to our event until the very last days of the registration period. This can be hugely frustrating as we try to finalize numbers for our venues, our food and beverage vendors, and any last minute materials we are preparing. Using manual event registration methods only makes this situation more agonizing. The workload is already heavy leading up to your event, who needs to make it worse?

Using real time reports in online event registration system offers you the ability to watch your registration data flow into the database in real time so you can get a more accurate count of expected attendees and what you will need for your event.

Interested in tracking your revenues? No kidding! With real time online reporting you always know how much revenue has been collected, if any credit cards were decline and which potential attendees still need to mail their checks. Manual event registration can’t quickly supply this type of important information which can create embarrassing registration situations for your or you client.

Lower Materials Costs; Lower Labor Costs

In the traditional manual event registration, a lot of time and money is spent on creating and printing hard copy materials – from registration forms to slick event brochures and information packages. While all this might be nice and attractive, it is also hugely expensive when it comes to printing and mailing and the labor involved in getting it all done. Does your budget allow this? Not many do these days when event budgets are usually pretty tight.

Online event registration allows you to eliminate or greatly reduce paper materials. You can present your event form and entire event information package online. If you want, you can print a smaller, less detailed brochure that will direct potential attendees to your website for all the information they need, including how to register online.

Labor costs are much lower when using online registration than when using manual event registration methods. Less phone calls, faxes, data entry, copying, and mailing.

Ditch Manual Event Registration – Go Online with rsvpBOOK

No time to spin your wheels with manual event registration? We didn’t think so. The tools in the rsvpBOOK online event registration and management software are made to make your life easier. We’re here to save time and money so you can work smart and be successful, no matter the type or size of your event or meeting. We make the complex tasks of event planning and management, easier.

rsvpBOOK helps you streamline your event processes, from beginning to end, from website details, to on-site resources, and final real time attendee and revenue reports. No need to duplicate information, manually process, and drag huge binders of forms with you everywhere. Let’s reduce the paperwork! Use your time to take care of more demanding matters – creating an outstanding attendee experience at your event.

After putting a lot of time and effort into an event, it can leave you exhausted and ready to forget it and move on to whatever is next on your list (including maybe that vacation you dreamed about). But an event professional’s work is never done not even when the event itself is over. Just as necessary to planning and getting all the details right for a successful event, is sitting down after the event and reviewing your results – the good, bad, and ugly. Enter the important but often overlooked – sometimes feared – post-event debrief.

Debriefing an event simply is asking yourself and your team focused questions about the event itself. Taking the time to analyze helps you get a firm understanding on what happened and how you can build upon that experience in the future.

Were our goals reached? What is the feedback from our attendees and other stakeholders? What processes worked or didn’t work? What lessons did we learn and how do we apply them to our future events?

Why the Post-Event Debrief

Even if you think you know the answers to these questions, holding a post-event debrief meeting to review the event while it is fresh in your mind is absolutely essential. Don’t view it as a negative experience. Post-event debriefs are not just about pointing out the mistakes that were made, but also about celebrating successes. The post-event debrief process helps identify how to replicate success, grow from challenges, and improve and innovate for your next events. It does not have to be hard or time consuming and it yields great results. Consider it the first planning session of your next event. You have all the knowledge from the event that just took place – what worked, what didn’t, attendee and stakeholder feedback on their experience, and how it can be improved. This is the framework to build for your future.

Honest and accurate feedback and discussion allows you as the event professional to make better business decisions about each event you do. This is the big reason for the post-event debrief.

How to Do a Post-Event Debrief Right

Just because a post-event debrief is done following your event doesn’t mean you shouldn’t prepare for it in advance. Start early by setting your objectives for the event and communicate them to your team before the actual event. Help them prepare by letting them know what your expectations for the event are and your measurements of success. Who are your key stakeholders (partners, sponsors, attendees, exhibitors) and how the event is intended to serve them. Once at the event, have them observe and get feedback on your event processes (registration, check-in, program, food services) to see how they were successful, how they could be improved and be more efficient going forward. Encourage everyone to keep their eyes open while onsite and write down observations and ideas as they come to mind. Take their observations and comments and fold them into your post-event debrief meeting for discussion.

Scheduling a short informal debrief “download” onsite immediately after the event concludes is really effective if you can arrange it. As time passes, insights, observations and experiences begin to get fuzzy compromising your ability to act on them. A quick review on what went well, what could go better next time, obvious problems at the event provides some instant feedback to take away for the subsequent formal debrief back at the office.

It almost goes without saying that if you want attendee and stakeholder feedback for your post-event debrief, you must ask them right away. Whatever method you use to question them, whether it is through onsite poll, a mobile app, next day online survey, social media, or email, knowing and using their feedback for your next event is what will influence its success. Some survey questions will apply to all participants but be careful not to distribute a “one-size-fits-all” piece. Write questions which are very specific to the needs of each participant segment in order to get right type of feedback.

For the actual post-event debrief, you want answers from two different groups of people based on their role in your event: the back-end “behind the scenes” participants and the front-end participants, essentially the attendees. Debriefing the back-end of your event requires you to evaluate the physical planning and execution of your event and how effective and efficient it was. Aimed at your team and vendors, your questions here focus primarily on efficiency, ease of task implementation, and flow of information. The front-end analysis concentrates on attendee experience and engagement with your event. This also includes checking in with your sponsors and exhibitors. These questions are posed directly to your attendees and these other stakeholders and deal primarily with program content, satisfaction with event activities, customer service, and attendee/stakeholder experience.

Post-Event Debrief Questions

As mentioned previously, debriefing an event simply is asking yourself and your team focused questions about the event itself. As part of the back-end and front-end reviews, here are some possible post-event debrief questions to consider.

Back-End Post-Event Debrief: These are questions aimed to work out how well the event was planned and executed. Ask them of your team members, vendors, and sponsors

1) What were our original event objectives and were they achieved?

2) Were there challenges meeting those objectives and what were they? (think budgetary constraints, revenue goals, marketing performance, AV or other technology issues)

3) Were those challenges resolved and how? Do they need to be discussed further for better results next time?

4) Were team member roles and expectations clearly defined and information available to ensure individual and team success?

5) What were some of our successes? How can we replicate at our next event or make even better?

Front-End Post-Event Debrief: Your front-end post-event debrief is entirely about assessing attendee experience and engagement. You want to know if their expectations were met, if they had fun, found value for their investment of time and money, and how you can make their experience even better in the future. Ways to get feedback have moved from the traditional mail-in questionnaire to getting the same information through the use of technology. Simpler. Faster. Easier. More immediate. Here are some ways to get attendee and stakeholder feedback.

Spot Polls. Onsite spot polls are fast and immediate. Attendees will have the most to say, and be the most likely to give you feedback, if you ask soon after they have interacted with some aspect of your event. And the possibilities of what information you can get from them via a poll are virtually endless – program, food, entertainment, speaker. Without the time delay of other feedback methods, the information you get from them while it is still fresh in their minds is considerably better.

Mobile Apps. Not as immediate as spot polls but certainly up there in getting fast responses, is using your mobile app. Good for a variety of purposes at your event from information sharing to networking, your mobile app also can be a platform to check-in with your attendees and get valuable feedback quickly. Again, you are tapping into their comments when they are best remembered.

Social Media. You used it to market your event, now use it for getting comments back about it. Put questions up on your social media. Surprise! It can be amazing the responses you will get by simply asking pointed questions after your event using Facebook or in a dedicated Twitter chat. Be prepared for the good, bad and ugly being out there for all to see.

Email. Still probably the most used method to get attendee feedback is the email survey. Send it out as quickly as possible after your event. Having it sitting in their email inbox when they get back to the office is best to prevent time delays making attendee and other stakeholders’ recollections fuzzy.

Final Thoughts on Post-Event Debriefs

Don’t fear the post-event debrief. Honest and accurate feedback and discussion is what you want. It allows you as the event professional to make better business decisions about each event you do. It provides the knowledge and understanding about your event to keep attendees and stakeholders happy and coming back for more. That is proof of your event success – and that’s what you want.

About Us – rsvpBOOK

rsvpBOOK is an online event registration and event management software. We help you streamline your event processes, from beginning to end, from creating your event website, to on-site resources, attendee and stakeholder feedback technology for your post-event debriefs, and final accounting reports. Use your time to take care of more demanding matters – creating an outstanding attendee experience.

rsvpBOOK. It’s smart, simple, saves you time and money. Let’s you work smarter, not harder.

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Or so the phrase goes in Charles Dickens’ book, A Tale of Two Cities. That’s how I often felt in my days as the event director for a small non-profit when the thrill of a great event would send me soaring but often the pain of getting there would make me so stressed and miserable that I would question “why am I doing this?!”

You get that roller coaster ride too? What are some of these “pain points” that we share as event professionals and what can we do to make it the best of times… at least more often.

What I experienced, and what other event professionals I know considered their biggest pain points of event professionals include: shrinking budgets and controlling costs, shorter lead times, not enough event staff, rapidly changing technology demands, continuing with time consuming event planning practices, and demonstrating the return on investment – ROI – to the “powers that be.” Not saying this is a complete list but this blog can only discuss so many at a time. So here we go…

The Incredible Shrinking Budget – WHAT Budget?

Shrinking budgets and controlling costs are almost enemy #1. OK you can’t hate the reality of working within a budget and controlling costs – it’s important for any company or organization to have a budget framework to work against. But it appears most event planners agree that shrinking budgets competing against rising expectations of company management, clients and attendees is a painful experience.

The “traditional” cost structure for events and meetings also has permanently disappeared in the last several years shifting the focus toward smaller gatherings of shorter duration, scheduled regionally or locally to reduce travel and expenses for event staff and attendees. Sponsorships usually geared toward large sit-down dinners and elaborate event signage often is used for less extravagant but more necessary and functional event needs. And this is just spending for the actual event itself. What if there is the need for additional event staff to plan and execute? Coffee and donuts at the local coffee shop anyone?

As event professionals we are faced with this reality so must set the tone for management, clients and attendees to reign in some less important expectations while creating memorable meetings and events. You can cope with these challenges by making small, often easy changes which appear natural and planned for the attendees.

I’m Late! I’m Late! – Shorter Lead Times

Isn’t it great to come into the office each day feeling you’re already behind the 8-ball? It isn’t fun. Event professionals invariably mention shortened lead times as one of the big pain points of event professionals. I remember thinking “this should only take a few months to make it happen” I also recall when things got crazy with all the numerous moving parts going sideways on me asking myself why I didn’t start planning sooner.

Not to make excuses, but shortened lead times are a challenge of modern event planning. Given that many organizations and companies don’t know their meeting and event budgets until the most recent fiscal results are available, the planning cycle has shrunk (along with those fun event budgets). One or two years has been reduced to a few months or weeks for event professionals to plan everything. No fun, lots of pressure, lots of pain.

However, as an event professional, you still have to work within the given time frame. So let’s shake hands with some of your challenges – like venue availability, caterers, sponsors, event personnel resources, attendee lists, marketing for attendance, competing events. The list goes on but you get the picture; you may have lived it.

Good Today, Better Tomorrow – Keeping Up with New Technology Demands

This is not a “keeping up with the Joneses” frivolous concern. Incorporating the latest and most event audience engaging technology has grown from being a novelty to critical necessity. The use of mobile devices has conditioned attendees to expect information, interactivity, and connectivity to be constantly available. A well thought-out event website now has the essentials including apps, mobile sites, and the use of the familiar social media channel buttons to enhance event and meeting attendance and attendee experience.

And now the most current disruptive technology change happening on social media with important ramifications for the event industry – live streaming. If I may quote Julius Solaris, Editor of the Event Management Blog: “The live stream revolution is happening. In the space of a few months, what used to be written is now live video. The social networks’ mantra ‘tell us what’s up’ has been replaced by ‘Show us what’s up.’ (Italics added)

And have you noticed the Pokemon Go craze? If you thought this was just a game for people with too much time on their hands, think again. This is the use of augmented reality to play a game but with wider implication for us as event professionals who want to provide attendees with the best attendee experience. Both live streaming and augmented reality are slow coming to events, but to ignore their importance – at some level in your event – is to lose out on a great engagement opportunity and a better attendee experience.

So maybe you don’t need the fanciest dinners or can eliminate that extra reception. Sometimes skimping on the necessary technology may be more detrimental to the attendee experience than that extra ounce of food and drink.

But We’ve Always Done it This Way – Using Outdated Planning Practices

Well this is one of the most painful of all pain points of event professionals. The use of multiple spreadsheets to track attendance and event financials; manual payment methods; malfunctioning databases and CRM systems; manual email invitation distribution; manual check-in (and the long lines); paper evaluation surveys. You name it, I experienced it all. Do. Not. Laugh.

So what are some of your old event planning practices you hang on to? Do you really want to keep them or do you want to move forward? OK, I get it – as event professionals we are always short on time and money and sometimes we rely on tried and true practices as it seems like the quickest or easiest thing to do. Or maybe “we’ve always done it that way” feels comfortable and taking the leap to do things differently fills you with dread.

But it’s really time to stop and reconsider. It’s time to come into the twenty-first century and lose some of those very labor intensive, extra work generating event planning practices. Break those old event habits, or at least the worse ones, and push your boundaries. When you do, you will realize that if you update your tools and choose the best modern practices to support your organization, it can lead to much better event and meeting success outcomes – with more hours in the day for you to focus on creating a better attendee experience. To work smarter and not harder and provide your attendees the best event experience, it’s time to change.

You’re Only as Good as Your Last Event – The Pursuit of Good ROI

When your event or meeting goes well, everyone will let you know and shower you with kudos. If it doesn’t go quite so well… watch out! You’ll DEFINITELY hear about it. Every planning and execution step taken is scrutinized and questioned so being ready for a successful event or meeting is essential. Sure, every event professional experiences hiccups along the way but positive ROI breathes long life into any event or meeting. But what are you measuring to determine ROI?

Proving return on investment (ROI) is the biggest struggle for event and meeting professionals. Sure you can measure the tangibles such as attendance goals met, expenses, evaluation feedback but what about the intangibles? Placing values and determining ROI on the intangibles hinge on measuring a variety of hard to measure facets and quantifying them to determine the overall effectiveness of a meeting or event. Such as how much time attendees spent in sessions, with key board members or partners or clients; how many attendees interacted with exhibitors and became customers; what about tracking social activity and attendee engagement after the event – just to name a few.

How attendees spent their time equates with interest, engagements and relationship building. Knowing this helps you create better events and to guide future action around what has proved interesting and useful to your attendees. In addition to time, knowing how many people actually interacted with exhibitors and engaged with sessions influence event attendees to return again and helps you justify the investment in your event or meeting. All these intangibles are important to ROI and a struggle sometimes to measure. Therein lays some pain for us all as event professionals.

Who Ya Gonna Call? No, Not Ghostbusters

So you’re feeling the pain and at rsvpBOOK, we’re feeling your pain too. Smaller budgets, shortened lead times, keeping up with new technology demands, stuck with labor- intensive event practices, quantifying good ROI and more. So who ya gonna call? No, not Ghostbusters.

rsvpBOOK can’t be your savior on everything. We can, however, provide you a smart, simple online event registration and event management software to save time, save money and allow you to work more efficiently to get things done right and on time in this era of increasing constraints but high expectations. And, the versatility of rsvpBOOK event management software meets your needs no matter the event type or size, from professional training meetings and workshops to large conferences.

Our powerful software brings together all the online registration and event management, marketing, onsite check-in, evaluation and attendee feedback reports, online payment processing tools you need into a single place. We help you streamline your event processes from beginning to end. No need to duplicate information, manually process, and drag huge binders of forms with you everywhere. rsvpBook has you covered so your event can manage itself. Smart. Simple. Efficiently.

So ditch the spreadsheets and reduce the paperwork! Alleviate some of the pain points of event professionals. Save your time and money, so you can use it to take care of more demanding matters and focus on what’s important – creating the best event and valuable attendee experience imaginable.

How Event Management Software Helps You Sell Your Event Tickets

Event management software enables you to manage multiple events quickly and efficiently. The software is easy to use and gives an overview of all activities related to your events. You can use it to input event details, communicate with participants, create reports and much more. One of the benefits of event management software is the ability to sell tickets from your event registration page.

How Can Event Management Software Help To Sell Your Event Tickets?

The software can be used to quickly setup an event registration page in which people can register and purchase tickets. The entire process of registering and purchasing ticket(s) can be completed in minutes. Using pen and paper event management requires you to employ a staff to manually process registrations and ticket payments. There can be errors when processing the information manually and the potential to lose information which results in problems with attendees and ticket sales. These problems are mitigated with a good Event Registration Software & Management tool because it automates the registration and ticketing process thus saving time and money. The payments are processed using credit cards which allows registrants to purchase tickets at their convenience. You can also go paperless by giving registrants a ticket number or including a Bar-code/QR in the confirmation email that can be scanned from their smart phone. All these features make the ticket processing easy which motivates people to buy tickets through the event registration page. The software not only offers an easy event registration page and secure payment processing but includes options for automatic discounts, group discounts, discount codes, and asking lodging and travel information.

Event Registration Software & Management can be used to easily market any event that you are managing. It can be integrated with social media sites so that your event page can be accessed by registrants through Facebook, Twitter, etc. This opens up opportunities for more ticket sales as more people know of the event registration page from these sites. You can use email marketing with the software. Email marketing is a very effective means of spreading information about an event and you can send out emails fast using the software’s email features. By making use of event registration software you can impress people with a smooth event registration page and increase ticket sales.

How do you choose between check-boxes and radio buttons? One is square and the other is round; which fits your event registration website? There is more to choosing than just looks or your favorite shape. Choosing the right option will decrease confusion for your registrants and increase the accuracy of your session selections.

Check-boxes in a group of sessions allow 1 or more to be selected while Radio Buttons allow only 1 selection.

Examples:

If you have sessions that occur on different dates OR at different times, then you will want to place them together in the same group AND use check-box selection – allows more than 1 to be selected .

If you have more than one session that begins at the same time, then you will want to place them together in the same group AND use radio button selection.

How do I decide how to Group my Sessions?

Grouping your sessions correctly is the key to insuring that your registrants are not confused by the selection options. A couple of general rules:

If you have sessions that start at the same time, make it impossible to register for more than one session – put all of these sessions in one group.

If you have sessions that start at different AND non-overlapping times, then you will want to make it easy to pick as many as sessions as they want – put all of these sessions in one group.

Tips

There cannot be check-boxes AND radio buttons in the same group.

If you require attendance at a session, then this session should not be in a radio button group with other sessions.

You can require attendance at the session level; however, …

Do not place 2 sessions, each requiring attendance, in a group with radio buttons